The Weekend Interview with Senator Jim DeMint

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703579804575441331350216628.html

"I'm getting optimistic. I think, as I talk to people around the country—they seem to get it. They want a return to those things that made America different and great. They understand that what the government has done is so harmful, in terms of spending and takeovers, the debt, it has made people who are not normally political and not generally interested in it alarmed.

"What makes the difference for me is feeling like I'm really giving a voice to people who care about what happens to our country." That is why Jim DeMint, for better or worse, has suddenly become a major political force.

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Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/26/AR2010082605233.html

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument.

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Obesity: Drink till you drop

(via instapundit.com)

http://www.economist.com/node/16881791

A report on the 12-week trial, published earlier this year, suggested that drinking water before meals does lead to weight loss. At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston this week, Dr Davy unveiled the results of a year-long follow-up study that confirms and expands that finding.

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Germany Beats Obama

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/opinion/27brooks.html?_r=1

According to Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, the Americans borrowed an amount equal to 6 percent of G.D.P. in an attempt to stimulate growth. The Germans spent about 1.5 percent of G.D.P. on their stimulus.

This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right?

The early returns suggest the Germans were. The American stimulus package was supposed to create a “summer of recovery,” according to Obama administration officials. Job growth was supposed to be surging at up to 500,000 a month. Instead, the U.S. economy is scuffling along.

The German economy, on the other hand, is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

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Inventing Moderate Islam

Andrew McCarthy defines "Moderate Islam":

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244545/inventing-moderate-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy

It is also worth understanding why Qaradawi says Islam and secularism cannot co-exist. The excerpt from his book continues:

As Islam is a comprehensive system of worship (Ibadah) and legislation (Shari’ah), the acceptance of secularism means abandonment of Shari’ah, a denial of the divine guidance and a rejection of Allah’s injunctions. It is indeed a false claim that Shari’ah is not proper to the requirements of the present age. The acceptance of a legislation formulated by humans means a preference of the humans’ limited knowledge and experiences to the divine guidance: “Say! Do you know better than Allah?” (Qur’an, 2:140) For this reason, the call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of Shari’ah is downright apostasy.

Apostasy is an explosive accusation. On another occasion, Sheikh Qaradawi explained that “Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished.” He further acknowledged that the consensus view of these jurists, including the principal schools of both Sunni and Shiite jurisprudence, is “that apostates must be executed.

If we were in that objective frame of mind, we would easily see that a freedom culture requires separation of the spiritual from the secular. We would also see that sharia — with dictates that contradict liberty and equality while sanctioning cruel punishments and holy war — is not moderate. Consequently, no one who advocates sharia can be a moderate, no matter how well-meaning he may be, no matter how heartfelt may be his conviction that this is God’s will, and no matter how much higher on the food chain he may be than Osama bin Laden.

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Thomas Sowell on American Collapse

Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson:

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=MmQ2NTJmMTc3YmQ3YjE5ZjBlNjFmNzhkNDRiYjZiMTM=

Thomas Sowell on American Collapse: Chapter 4 of 5
Thomas Sowell states that if the Obama agenda is not stopped in the November 2010 elections, he doesn’t know how it will ever be stopped. 

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Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero

http://www.humanevents.com/offers/offer.php?id=MSQ100&time=20100805921

TO:	Community Board 1 Members
CC:	Mayor Michael Bloomberg
	Governor David Paterson

We, the editors of Human Events and RedState.com, and the many Americans who have attached our signatures to this petition, hereby request your immediate personal intervention to block the construction of the proposed 13-story, Ground Zero mosque.

The building, with its towering design, "triumphantly” peering down on the hallowed ground where more than 3,000 Americans fell to an Islamic jihadist attack and constructed with questionable funding on a deliberately insensitive location means that, rather than fostering tolerance and understanding, the mosque is intended to symbolize Islamic victory over America and her Western values.

Throughout Islamic history, the placement of mosques has been an expression of conquest and superiority over non-Muslims. Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem to assert Islam's superiority over Judaism. Similarly, the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople was converted into a mosque to assert the superiority of Islam over Christianity. An estimated 2,000 mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples for the same reason. Even the proposed name of the Ground Zero mosque, "Cordoba House,” is a clear historical reference to the Spanish city where a church was converted into a mosque after the city was conquered by a Muslim army.

The Ground Zero mosque is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common decency. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is to stab at the hearts of those who lost loved ones in those attacks. We sincerely request that you do everything in your power to put a halt to this outrage immediately.

Respectfully submitted, The Editors of Human Events The Editors of RedState.com

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Reagan: Best Advertorial You'll See

The Ace of Spades links to a video featuring Reagan against today's Democrats...

http://minx.cc/?post=304681

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Charles Krauthammer - Sacrilege at Ground Zero

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081204996.html

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi -- yet despite contemporary Germany's innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

Which makes you wonder about the goodwill behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's proposal. This is a man who has called U.S. policy "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, "I'm not a politician. . . . The issue of terrorism is a very complex question."

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